Next Steps/Final Thoughts

When I first introduced Discussion Boards, I was worried that students would only see this as a tool to be used outside of class, perhaps for homework, rather than during class time. However, through planning and scaffolding how to use the DB and its purpose, I realized (along with my students) that this tool can have multiple uses both in and out of the classroom environment. I also became more confident at using technology in my classroom, as I realized that even despite the small technological gliches that were encountered, the overall objectives, which correlated with my curriculum, were able to be maintained and eventually achieved.

My colleague who taped my practicum discussed my use of the ICT with me after viewing the lesson, and noted his amazement at my students' work ethic when using the computers and the discussion boards, rather than their usual group work ethic. Students were more thoroughly on task and focused on work achievement through collaboration, and were less apt to become distracted, despite the distractions that the use of the Internet has the capability of providing. He later decided to try using the DBs for achieving this same purpose of collaboration, and noted improvements in their group work both during and after the implementation of the tool.

I realized that, by using the DB as a tool for enabling collaboration, students became efficient at working in a group setting; something that is extremely important for them to achieve as they progress not only through the high school, but through their post-h.s. lives. Students also loved the opportunity to peek at their peers' work and to have this work to go back to later during individual writing assignments. Additionally, because of the work becoming artifacts on the class website, they became more confident at their ability to create statements of themes (which was also clear in their later writing assignments).

After the practicum lesson, my students asked to continue to use the DB for journal entries, as they really enjoyed the ability to comment on each other's ideas and to add their own perspectives. Many of our in-class conversations now stem from their online discussions, bringing the outside use of the ICT back into the classroom as well. Plus, one student made a recommendation to set up a thread for paper assignments, where students could ask each other and myself questions while writing papers, be it about quote blending, thorough analysis, citations or thesis statements, and where they could provide each other feedback. Initially, students were a bit wary to comment on each other's writing in this way, and would directly ask me questions. However, I would respond with more guiding questions for their peers to answer. It has come to a point in the year now when the students address each other rather than initially addressing me when asking questions about writing. Granted, I still check in to ensure that the information they are providing each other reflects what we have reviewed in class, but it is clear that their ability to provide feedback has become stronger, and that they now trust each other to provide powerful responses to their questions. In this way, they are becoming more independent learners as well.

In the future, I will continue to integrate this ICT but I'd like to figure out more ways that the discussion boards can be utilized. I also want to work on adding other tools to integrate that would dove-tail nicely with what the curriculum standards and goals comprise. In order to do this, I know I will need to have clear specific goals in mind that do not comprise too many ideals, seeing as the students often need to learn how to use the tool first. I also know that the more practice students have with ICTs, the more it will become their own, and we can work together to figure out the best ways to use them.

Next Steps/Recs.

Since the use of a wiki was implemented into my classroom language arts instruction in November, I have since had time to work on this with my students in different ways. One of the students figured out on her own from home how to use the messaging feature, which is like e-mail. She was able to compose messages to me and the other students from home. At first, some of the other students were "tattling" on her and wondering why she did that. I was able to explain the feature to all of the students and let them practice using it. I did explain to the students that I was monitoring their communication and that I received a copy of any message they sent to one another. They have been using this since they figured out how it works in December. None of the messages are about anything significant, but they do enjoy communicating over weekends and vacations.

Once the students starting using the wiki from home for the messaging, they also started to comment on one another's work they had been publishing in their individual work spaces I created for them on the wiki. Students became more familiar with the set-up of the wiki and how to add and edit content. As the school year progressed, and students became more skilled in other areas of technology (word processing skills, navigating between two or more pages, etc.) they were able to transfer these skills for use on the wiki.

When I first implemented this technology into my classroom, I thought I might have introduced it too early in the year. My students were not very comfortable with computer navigation and just had a few basic skills under their belts. Looking back, I think introducing the use of the wiki earlier on in the year proved to be beneficial to students. They started with a small task of posting text on the wiki and responding to another student. As they became more proficient with different computer skills, their abilities to work with the wiki also improved. Many students approached the wiki on their own from home and used this even when not required to do so for class. This built motivation for using it within class and the kinds of things students were able to publish and share on the wiki increased.

If introducing a wiki into a third grade class for language arts instruction, I believe it is important to start small. I could have changed my original objective to have students post one idea on the wiki, and in subsequent lessons, build and progress from this basic objective. Scaffolding is important to help students develop the skills they need for independent completion of work on the wiki. I would also encourage students to explore the wiki on their own, perhaps giving students free time in the computer lab to do this. The security features on the wiki allowed for me to observe my students learning how to use the technology without the risk of improper use.

Kim's Conclusions - sorry for the length!

Despite the original implementation plan, there were some changes to the original form of assessment. This includes the decision to use the same rubric for the theme statement and supporting evidence in both the pre-lesson and the implementation lesson that utilized technology. The reason for this was because of the realization that many of the criteria from the rubric that incorporated the discussion board no longer applied to the in-class implementation lesson. Instead, much of that rubric focused on out-of-class postings, and in an effort to keep the recording of data somewhat standardized, the rubric for this information remained the same throughout. Of additional importance, and in order to understand the results in the appendixes, it is necessary to note that a week after the pre-lesson, an additional student switched into the sample class, making the number of students now 23, rather than the 22 students that were present for the Catcher in the Rye pre-lesson.

One contextual factor that could have interfered with the success of this implementation was the student’s’ comfort in working with their peers in their groups, as this could hinder their ability to openly share their perspectives and ideas. However, during the lesson, I heard each student in the class add at least one comment to the group’s discussion. Another contextual factor was the technological hardware. Some of the computers had difficulty working during the theme creation, and later, when working on the discussion boards to add support to the alternative group, one group accidentally hit a button on the keyboard that deleted their work. This group spent about ten minutes trying to get the work back, at which point they realized they needed to re-do the work. As a result, the group became very frustrated.

Additionally, there were two video cameras rolling throughout the lesson. As this is something the students are not used to on a daily basis, this contextual factor took some time for them to become comfortable with, and it was obvious that some students were more comfortable with having the cameras in the room than others were. A final contextual factor was centered on their reading of the text, especially if they had actually read the assigned passages up until the practicum lesson. Also, this is not an “easy” text, as it is written in the minimalistic style, meaning that nearly everything mentioned in the novel some sort of deeper meaning. If students had difficulty understanding the nuances of the text, this could be another factor that could obstruct their development of a powerful theme statement.

The first initial objective was:

1: When placed in heterogeneous groups determined by comfort level pre-surveys on using technology, a minimum of six pairs (twelve students) from this class will be able to use the discussion board threads on our class BlackBoard page to develop a theme statement that merits a numeric score of four on the “Collaborative In-Class Group Work: Development of Theme Statements Using Discussion Board” rubric, found under the section entitled “Good/Fair: Meets Standard.”

Based on the implementation of the lesson, 11/23 students received a 4/4 on their theme statements. While this does not meet the original objective (12 students), this is still an increase from the pre-lesson’s data, where zero students received a 4/4 on their theme statements. According to this data, students are improving on their development and support of theme statements, but students will need to continually work on this skill in order to become entirely proficient at this task.

The second objective stated:

2: When placed in heterogeneous groups determined by comfort level pre-surveys on working in collaborative groups, a minimum of twelve individuals from this class will be able to numerically score a four in terms of their ability to self-manage, self-monitor and self-modify, as described in the “Collaborative In-Class Group Work Rubric,” found under the section entitled “Good/Fair: Meets Standard.”

As a whole, most students improved on their initial ability to self-manage, self-monitor and self-modify when working in collaborative groups (see Appendix 2b and 2c for pre- and post-implementation results). Students went above the initial expectations from the objective, and hence, they have improved upon their individual contributions during collaborative group work.

The third objective stated:

3: After the completion of the day’s lesson, at least one student will increase his comfort levels of using discussion boards to develop his understanding of creating and supporting a theme statement, as determined in his responses to the pre- and post-survey on technology comfort levels.

Based on the results from the post-lesson comfort surveys concerning the use of discussion boards, most students increased their comfort level with their use of this technology (see Appendix 3 b and 3c for pre- and post- implementation results). Because of the results of this data, it is clear that students have become more comfortable in using the discussion board during the day’s lesson to create a statement of theme. This also became quite clear in their responses on an anonymous “Reflection” thread on the discussion board (see later discussion).

The fourth objective stated:

4: After the completion of the day’s lessons, at least one student will increase his comfort levels of using collaborative groups to develop his understanding of creating and supporting a theme statement, as determined in his responses to the pre- and post-survey on collaboration comfort levels.

Many students increased their comfort levels of working in collaborative groups during the implementation (see Appendix 4b and 4c for pre- and post-implementation results). There were no students that rated their comfort as below a 3/5 when working with collaborative groups during the implementation, and some of the commentary on the surveys concerning the group work included “My group helped me understand what a theme actually is” and “If I did this by myself, my ideas would not be as developed as they were when we worked together.” Such commentary continued within the anonymous postings on the “Reflections” thread in the discussion board.

Despite the anonymity of the reflections, the responses to the anonymous reflective prompts indicated that using the technology while working in collaborative groups helped to enhance individual understanding of how to create and support theme statements (see Appendix M for prompts). Some of the post-lesson responses included the following commentary:

1) “I like using discussion boards because if I'm stuck or need help with an idea I can view other people's threads and see their point of view which helps me view something differently and helps me get an idea. I thought that this was a cool way to share information and learn more. I really liked it”; and 2) “I liked how we used technology. We made better use of our time and energy by just one person typing, and it was a lot easier than writing it out. I also liked how we used the discussion board to communicate with our other groups and how we could access the themes of others to further understand their ideas. Using this technology really helped in terms of our discussions, and we went more in depth.”

As shown by their commentary, most students saw the discussion boards as a tool to facilitate their learning, rather than their seeing the use of technology as being the focus of the lesson. Instead, the implementation of the technology furthered the group’s collaborative discussion of ideas, and allowed for the viewing of alternative peer models before finalizing and posting their ideas. In this sharing of ideas between groups, a kind of social cognition of the lesson’s content was created, aided by the technology.

After reflecting on the implementation of this technology, and in reviewing students’ anonymous reflections on the discussion boards, there are some definitive revisions to be made in implementing this technology in the future. Some of these revisions are based on additional commentary from the anonymous reflection postings on the discussion board. A few of the comments reflected the following notions:

1) Using the discussion board was okay, but I prefer taking notes as a class while we have a discussion. It was frustrating that you cannot really edit it after it is submitted”, and 2) “My group became very flustered and annoyed when the computer didn't respond.”

While I believe that the discussion boards are an efficient way to create student artifacts of information for future writing assignments and to track student progress, I think I need to stress that students are still allowed to take notes during the discussion board process. In this way, I will be differentiating the lesson to the variety of students’ learning needs. I would also like to research the possibility of editing posts that have already been posted to allow only final posts, rather than drafts, to be made public. Not only this, but to avoid potential technological issues with the computers, I will need to check the computers in the carts before usage to ensure that all laptops work, as this will avoid student frustration during the lesson implementation. Also, instead of having each student have their own computer during the group work, I would rather each group have a shared computer, as this would further the group’s collaborative efforts. As a matter of fact, most groups ended up sharing one computer during the lesson without my prompting, and in watching these groups, I realized the added collaboration within the group when the computer was shared during this process.

Based on the implementation of technology in this lesson, I have found that the content of the lesson yielded many positive results, and is appropriate for use within the high school setting, especially with the target audience of the sophomore students. However, I also realized that some students felt rushed to find appropriate text for supporting their alternative group’s theme, and then to post their reflection. In the future, I may have the groups only find one rather than two quotes of support with analysis, then that night for homework, they could choose another group’s theme and find an additional quote to analyze. Students should also complete the reflection at home. In this way, students would further understand the variation of themes that can exist within a text, and how their finding appropriate support is a crucial element of making a theme statement viable. I would also like to have a follow-up lesson to discuss the process of the collaborative groups’ work after the implementation.

The rubrics used during the lesson, both the individual assessment for the collaborative group work as well as the collaborative theme group work, allowed for the initial objectives to be achieved in this implementation. Also, both rubrics represent content in the course that remains as constant despite the passage of time (i.e., how to develop a theme statement; how to self-manage, self-monitor, self-modify). For other educators, I recommend that the discussion board threads for each group is created ahead of time. Some students ended up posting each segment of their collaborative group work in a different thread, cluttering the discussion board and making it difficult to locate the necessary information. This became especially problematic when some students tried to find their alternative group’s theme. I also would recommend that a model thread with all steps be provided for students to see what is expected of them during the lesson, as this provides a template for their collaborative work and discussion.

Perhaps most importantly, the work from the implementation of the technology needs to be connected to an authentic assessment in the future. In this way, students will understand the utility of using a discussion board as a workspace to gather perspectives, ideas and class work. In following the implementation with a writing assessment, the boards will actually have the added purpose of pre-writing activities that models what students must do individually in their writing.

Response to Em's "Conclusions"

Using the wiki for discussion of texts promoted more collaboration than had occured when students were hand-writing their responses. This practicum supported language arts goals from the curriculm because students read and responded to questions about a text they read, used evidence from the text to justify their ideas, critiqued the response of a partner, used editing and revising skills and worked as a group to compose a response. These are all really powerful statements that displays now only how this allowed for a personal goal, but allowed for a curricular goal as well. Personal goals that parallel curricular goals are essential, as this shows a purpose in the implementation of technology.

These objectives could have been achieved without the use of a wiki. The wiki did support collaboration, but this could have occurred without the use of this technology. Word processing skills seemed to intefere with student responses. When I implemented this tool, it was the beginning of the year. Students did not have strong typing skills. At this point in the year, my students have had more opportunities to publish work through word processing. I would be interested to see how they did on a similar assignment now that their skills are stronger in writing an electronic response. Would this similar assignment be with the use of technology, as in, completing a comparative study? I agree that this would be intriguing, as it would help to validate and perhaps to even extend the conclusions you found and would help to determine if your students have improved with typing and word processing skills, and it would help you to understand whether or not they work better collaboratively with the tech tool, without the typing becoming an impediment for collaboration and work in general. This is a really interesting point, and is one that I would have never foreseen, considering my high school students have had extreme experience with word processing!

It was difficult for me to examine the data and make solid conclusions after this lesson. I believe this to be true because I had so many objectives, almost too many. I wonder if, now that we have worked to consolidate these objectives, they would be a bit easier to achieve. The Likert scale was not as valuable as I thought it might be. Frustrating! My students did not have enough experience working with a wiki to form valid opinions about how this could enhance or change the quality of their work.

Students enjoyed being able to read the work of the peers, comment on their peers workspaces and read what their peers had written to them. We have since used the wiki in class, and students enjoy using it as a space to publish and share ideas. Students have also learned how to use the messaging feature and have been communicating with one another from home using this (like e-mail). I hope to find more ways to incorporate this tool into my instruction because my students truly do enjoy using it. Perhaps this tool is better used for publishing student work and having students freely comment on the work, rather than using it for in-class collaboration, as the typing may continue to be an issue. Your honesty here is extremely important in your findings and includes reasons for student difficulty at achieving the objectives; ones that I had never thought of before. I think you also pose some interesting ideas here - could students have an increased achievement with this tool now, seeing as they now have more experience at using technology and word processing? Well done!

Emily's Conclusions

Using the wiki for discussion of texts promoted more collaboration than had occured when students were hand-writing their responses. This practicum supported language arts goals from the curriculm because students read and responded to questions about a text they read, used evidence from the text to justify their ideas, crtiqiued the response of a partner, used editing and revising skills and worked as a group to compose a response.

These objectives could have been achieved without the use of a wiki. The wiki did support collaboration, but this could have occurred without the use of this technology. Word processing skills seemed to intefere with student responses. When I implemented this tool, it was the beginning of the year. Students did not have strong typing skills. At this point in the year, my students have had more opportunities to publish work through word processing. I would be interested to see how they did on a similar assignment now that their skills are stronger in writing an electronic response.

It was difficult for me to examine the data and make solid conclusions after this lesson. I believe this to be true because I had so many objectives, almost too many. The Likert scale was not as valuable as I thought it might be. My students did not have enough experience working with a wiki to form valid opinions about how this could enhance or change the quality of their work.

Students enjoyed being able to read the work of the peers, comment on their peers workspaces and read what their peers had written to them. We have since used the wiki in class, and students enjoy using it as a space to publish and share ideas. Students have also learned how to use the messaging feature and have been communicating with one another from home using this (like e-mail). I hope to find more ways to incorporate this tool into my instruction because my students truly do enjoy using it.

My Results (Kim)

Results

In the pre-lesson on theme statements, completed with Catcher in the Rye, a rubric was applied to assess the students’ creation of themes. This is the same rubric as the one used for developing a theme statement during the implemented lesson (see Appendix A). After the pre-lesson, students were assessed based on their developed theme statement and based on their providing proper textual evidence for this theme statement (results in Appendix B).

Following this pre-lesson, before the implementation of the technology, students also individually self-assessed their contributions during the collaborative group work using a rubric (Appendix D). The results from the self-assessment, as well as observations made during the class, helped in the grading of students’ individual effort during the collaborative group process (results in appendix E).

Before the implementation of discussion boards, students completed a technology comfort pre-survey and a collaboration comfort pre-survey. On the technology comfort pre-survey, students first rated their comfort level with using the discussion boards based on an informative scale (see Appendix G). The results from this pre-assessment of student comfort with using this technology were then assessed (Appendix H). In rating their comfort level with collaborative group work, students placed themselves within the realm of one area of the comfort scale (Appendix J). Based on these options, the students self-rated their comfort with collaborative groups (Appendix K).

Following the implementation of discussion boards, students had created new theme statements for the current text, and were assessed based on the quality of these themes and their ability to support an alternative theme (Appendix C), using the same rubric from the pre-lesson on theme statements and their evidence (Appendix A).

Students also completed the post- technology comfort surveys (Appendix I) and collaborative group comfort surveys (Appendix L) after the implementation, which contained the same comfort scales as the pre-surveys (Appendices G and J).

Also, after the implementation of the technology, students self-assessed themselves in a collaborative group work rubric, the same rubric that was used in the pre-lesson, based on their individual contributions to the group. This information and observations of students during the lesson helped to determine their scores (results in Appendix F).

During the lesson, I heard one student ask her fellow group members to check another group’s progress on the discussion board to make sure they were doing the work correctly. In doing so, the student said, “We are exactly where we should be,” to which one of her peers responded, “I like that we can see what other people are doing to make sure we’re doing this right.”

Later, in speaking with a student about the discussion board, he said, “I didn’t get how to do a theme before, but now there’s all these examples, so the homeworks that ask for a theme will be a lot easier.” Then, a week later, when students were working on an exploratory paper that required the application of a theme, I polled the class to see who used the artifacts on the discussion board to help them develop their own themes and ideas. A little more than half the class (12/23 students) raised their hands, and one student who did not raise his hand said, “I need to check that later – I forgot about it.”

Response to Em's Results (Kim)

I chose to incorporate a wiki into my language arts instruction to determine whether writing an electronic response would be more effective than having students produce a hand-written response. It may help to immediately define what you mean by "more effective", as this could be determined in a variety of different ways, depending on what you are hoping for your students to achieve. I collected data for a period of two weeks about the quality of students' written responses to text before implementing the wiki in my classroom. It may also be a good idea to discuss what kind of responses these are - personal connections? analysis of character? reaction? prediction? Sorry to be a total English teacher here... I set different goals for each student depending on their current level of responding to text. Great differentiation for the variance of students within the population. Some students were expected to produce a written response of greater value on the wiki than a written response. Others, were expeccted to produce a written response that was of equal or greater quality than the hand-written response. Great differentiation for the variance of students within the population. I am a little unsure of what you mean by "value" and "quality" - how was this determined? I was hoping that the collaboration that the wiki would provide and enable could help students to think of a more-developed response. I like that you integrated a piece of your goals here.

During the wiki lessons, student responses showed improvements. None of the students performed worse on electronic responses than written responses. Was this based upon point or grade allotment of work? Was it based off of a rubric? Upon examination of student responses on the wiki, there was evidence to support the fact that students incorporated ideas from their partners in their responses. They were also able to dispute ideas of their partners that they did not agree with and provide evidence from the text to jusitfy their position. Great point here about the added bonus of wiki use.

The wiki also increased student motivation, interest and cooperation. My third graders were motivated to publish their responses to the class wiki. They enjoyed being able to quickly read and respond to the thoughts of numerous peers in one day. Students also were able to access the wiki from home, and continued to write and respond to one another from home, even though I had not asked them to do this. Students were able to agree or disagree respectively with one another on the wiki by using information from their own post and the text their group had read. Also powerful points within this paragraph that actually expands upon the initial expectations of written work, and branches into motivation, interest and cooperation.

My Results (Emily)

I chose to incorporate a wiki into my language arts instruction to determine whether writing an electronic response would be more effective than having students produce a hand-written response. I collected data for a period of two weeks about the quality of students' written responses to text before implementing the wiki in my classroom. I set different goals for each student depending on their current level of responding to text. Some students were expected to produce a written response of greater value on the wiki than a written response. Others, were expeccted to produce a written response that was of equal or greater quality than the hand-written response. I was hoping that the collaboration that the wiki would provide and enable could help students to think of a more-developed response.

During the wiki lessons, student responses showed improvements. None of the students performed worse on electronic responses than written responses. Upon examination of student responses on the wiki, there was evidence to support the fact that students incorporated ideas from their partners in their responses. They were also able to dispute ideas of their partners that they did not agree with and provide evidence from the text to jusitfy their position.

The wiki also increased student motivation, interest and cooperation. My third graders were motivated to publish their responses to the class wiki. They enjoyed being able to quickly read and respond to the thoughts of numerous peers in one day. Students also were able to access the wiki from home, and continued to write and respond to one another from home, even though I had not asked them to do this. Students were able to agree or disagree respectively with one another on the wiki by using information from their own post and the text their group had read.

Response to Em's Comments

Paragraph 3
In retrospect, this section is somewhat confusing. I think that by adding a bit more detail as to how students commented on each other's posts would make a lot of sense to someone who was not there to see it. Here is what I am thinking... the original states:

• "Upon making this list, each group starred one idea to focus upon to develop the author’s perspective of that recurring idea. Once the recurring ideas were posted on the group’s thread, each group replied to this thread in order to begin their development of the author’s point of view, and then to develop their statement of theme to match this perspective. This development of theme was tracked on the group’s thread, and once groups completed their work, it became public through their posting in the thread."

Instead, I can state:

• "Upon making this list, each group starred one idea to focus upon to develop the author’s perspective of that recurring idea. Once the recurring ideas were posted on the group’s thread, each group collaborated to develop the author’s point of view about this recurring idea. The collaboration continued as the group worked together to develop their statement of theme to match this perspective. This development of theme was tracked through each group’s posts, with each response becoming a thread within the group's discussion. Through posting their responses, each group's work became public on the class discussion board."

Paragraph 4
The feedback I got definitely gave me areas to think about for utilizing this tool in the future. Some students wanted an opportunity to practice the skills of posting on threaded discussions a bit more before this activity, and other students asked for an opportunity AFTER this activity to reply to each other individually through homework postings and responses. I really liked this suggestion, and as we finished the book, students posted themes and commented on them to make them better and to find support with each reading. It was a great suggestion, and one that I will continue to implement in the future. I really think that it is important to get student feedback to see how the experience was for them in order to improve upon any activity in the future.

Paragraph 5
In the control lesson, I used worksheets with graphic organizers, and students worked in groups to write down each section of the theme development on their sheet. In having them do this beforehand, they were a little bit more aware of what the process of theme development was; however, the whole process was much more organized, coherent and collaborative when implementing the Discussion Board.

Review of Kim's Summary Section

I did not copy and paste the paragraphs from your paper, but used the same set-up of referring to paragraphs by number based upon their order in the document.


Summary Section

Paragraph 1
Your first paragraph clearly outlines the lesson objectives. I like the way you also described your goals, providing rationale for why you decided to use the discussion board with students.

Paragraph 2
It was helpful for me to read the step-by-step progression of the lesson. Describing the time it took for each step to occur made it clear to me what this implementation looked like in your classroom. As an elementary school teacher, I am not sure of the pace at which high school students complete specific reading and writing tasks in the classroom. I know it is quicker than my third graders, but you providing the step-by-step description made this clear. It allowed me to visualize what was going on in the classroom.

Paragraph 3
I was a little bit confused with this paragraph. I wasn't sure if the students were reading the posts of other groups and commenting on the other groups. Perhaps you could explain this a little bit more.

Paragraph 4
Collecting student feedback seems like a valuable step. It was nice that students were given this opportunity to reflect on their experience with the discussion boards. Did you receive any helpful feedback? Any surprising feedback?

Paragraph 5
How have you previously taught this lesson without technology?